Less stars, more controversy: Opening night at the Venice Film Festival
All the latest developments from the opening ceremony and world premiere of 'Comandante' at the 80th edition of the Venice International Film Festival
Transcript
00:00 Venice rolls out the red carpet and fills with glamour at the opening of its famous
00:05 film festival. An edition with more Italian and European flavour than ever. And it's for
00:11 a matter of principle. Hollywood actors have been on strike since mid-July. The president
00:17 of the jury, American director Damien Chazelle, has expressed his support for the walkout
00:21 and for cinema as art, not as content to feed the channel. David Morricone does more from
00:27 the Serenissima. The 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival kicked off with the Italian
00:32 World War II film Comandante, which replaced Luca Guadagnino's Challengers due to the ongoing
00:38 writers and actors' strikes in the US. It's a strong sub, as the film finds humanity in
00:43 the darkest of places, as World War II submariners disobey their orders and save some of their
00:49 enemies. But the main talking point on the Lido at the moment is still the inclusion
00:55 in the line-up of three controversial directors, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and Luc Besson.
01:01 It remains to be seen how these films are received, but they will premiere in the coming
01:05 days. From Venice, David Morricone, Euronews.
01:09 (whooshing)